Stolen DVD Drive

By dnichols85
in Microsoft (Windows)

 Share

Recommended Posts

Neowinian

Digital Rage

Posted
Posted
You obviously don't watch much news. Perhaps this is an inner-city school.

Most schools I have done work in have CCTV outside the building, in the cafeterias and usually pointing at the doors accessing the computer labs. I haven't seen one inside the classroom though.

There's going to be no record of when or who removed the drive. The best thing you could do is set an example. Remove all the drives and explain to each class as to why the privilege was removed. Perhaps an witness to the theft will come forward.

One thing I've failed to see mentioned here. CCTV cameras don't mean much. My apartment has them on every floor and where I work has at least 15 (that I have counted) in the building. The problem is the storage required for these systems. I know at work they don't store more than 3 days because of the space required. My apartment only stores about 2 days of video for the same reason. Not sure if it's even worth the time to try and investigate for what is probably only a $15 part these days. Guess it depends on what your time is worth. My high school learned quite quickly that optical drives were pointless to install as they failed rather quickly due to the abuse they took. Finally they got smart and ran most things from the server over the network. I'm not trying to say that you just ignore theft from your computer labs but if you want to discourage it you need to look into better solutions (locking cases, Citrix servers, dedicated CCTV system for that lab....). Don't rely on and event log as it can be misleading. People do forget to logout. Seeing who the last user on may not necessarily be the user that did the crime. Event logs can also be forged so I seriously wouldn't rely on it. Rather than waste time and money trying to figure out who did it I'd suggest redirecting that time and money into a better way to control and monitor that computer lab. In the long run it would probably save you money and headache.

  • 3 weeks later...
Proficient

MagicMan

Posted
Posted
All of the gangs are moving over to the Porter County because they don't like what they did to Gary. Schools are getting really bad in my area.

Up until I read that, I thought "I blame Gary" was refering to a person. I thought it was a tad harsh blaming one guy!

Grand Master

JMann Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

What's the naming convention on the network? If users are logging in as themselves or a unique ID, you can check the Security logs for the last time someone logged in since the drive has gone (you should see them logging on, or shutting down the computer).

Proficient

Madoshi

Posted
Posted
What's the naming convention on the network? If users are logging in as themselves or a unique ID, you can check the Security logs for the last time someone logged in since the drive has gone (you should see them logging on, or shutting down the computer).

whos to say the machine wasn't used afterwards?

my old school had a Novell network, XP Pro VLK clients, and 70% of the library's DVD/CD-RW drives busted. i noticed that the sysop there had replaced a few of them with old CD-ROMs but i think she gave up.

there is a security camera in the lobby, thats about it. i think i nabbed about 15 XP Pro COAs AND the volume license key they were using. (i am not as innocent as i may lead people to believe :()

about the DVD being important: if it was in a classroom, where the teacher made use of a CD-based teaching materials, i could see it being important. or in a library of a school who's Spanish course passes out DVDs to every student taking Spanish. the drives become very important and teachers/students get pretty tense when they can't do what they want when they want to.

$15 isn't alot, but say you have that happen to 10 machines. thats $150 + time to obtain and install the replacement. on top of whatever else the little ******* did.

  • 3 weeks later...
Neowinian

Digital Rage

Posted
Posted
whos to say the machine wasn't used afterwards?

my old school had a Novell network, XP Pro VLK clients, and 70% of the library's DVD/CD-RW drives busted. i noticed that the sysop there had replaced a few of them with old CD-ROMs but i think she gave up.

there is a security camera in the lobby, thats about it. i think i nabbed about 15 XP Pro COAs AND the volume license key they were using. (i am not as innocent as i may lead people to believe :()

about the DVD being important: if it was in a classroom, where the teacher made use of a CD-based teaching materials, i could see it being important. or in a library of a school who's Spanish course passes out DVDs to every student taking Spanish. the drives become very important and teachers/students get pretty tense when they can't do what they want when they want to.

$15 isn't alot, but say you have that happen to 10 machines. thats $150 + time to obtain and install the replacement. on top of whatever else the little ******* did.

OK again I hate to say it but your fighting a loosing battle. I'm sorry JMann but you obviously haven't dealt with network or even machine security before. Simply looking at who the last user was in no way means that's who swiped the drive. All it takes is someone to come in, power off the system, yank the drive and your gone. Anyone with a working brain would know that and also know there is no way to track it by relying on system logs. The only possible useful info those may tell you is approx what time the device went missing and that's only providing they weren't smart enough to get into the BIOS and muck with the system time. Now this small problem aside...

Are you guys seriously running full systems where anyone can install anything and royally muck up the machine? Then you have to pay a tech (In my experience even so called computer teachers are by no means techs) to fix/reinstall the system..??? Honestly. Get rid of the CD/DVD ROM drives as they are not neaded, give each student a bit of storage on the server and a floppy drive if they want to take things home, and make the systems thin clients. Less headache. If you MUST have an HD with programs installed on each system look into something (it's a bit old but think it's still around) like Deep Freeze (Microsoft makes their own clone of it called Steady State). I haven't yet had the chance to play with Steady State but from what I hear Deep Freeze is still at current better. Heck even Citrix could be a solution to look at. Please tell me you never went with LCD screens but the old CRT as they take WAY more of a beating then the LCD ones. :)

ttyl

Digital

Neowinian

Digital Rage

Posted
Posted
This is why we have removed all cd rom drives from the place of work, and installed cameras in all the labs........

You will be surprised what kids steal!!

Oh I know. Remember when all you pretty much had were the mice with the balls in them? I've seen kids even steal those (the ball out of the mouse). What the heck they would want those for is beyond me.

Grand Master

SirEvan

Posted
Posted

try going to eventvwr, looking at system log, and then filtering by "cdrom" not sure if it will work...I just tried it, and no results came back....but then again I haven't taken my bluray drive out either.

Grand Master

fhpuqrgrpgvirzhpujbj

Posted
Posted
try going to eventvwr, looking at system log, and then filtering by "cdrom" not sure if it will work...I just tried it, and no results came back....but then again I haven't taken my bluray drive out either.

It's not likely to show up if you filter it by cdrom.

Grand Master

acnpt

Posted
Posted
Oh I know. Remember when all you pretty much had were the mice with the balls in them? I've seen kids even steal those (the ball out of the mouse). What the heck they would want those for is beyond me.

Try and bounce it around, throw it, play football with it. The kids were probably just bored.

A lot of Sysadmins used to glue the twisty bit to stop it happening :laugh:

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

  • Posts

    • The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months

      By hellowalkman · Posted

      The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months by Sayan Sen Yesterday, we covered a really good deal wherein you can get a 4TB TeamGroup T-FORCE G50 NVMe PCIe Gen4 SSD for a low price of just $400 with a special discount coupon. That's just $100 per TB, making it a very good offer during these hard times. The deal is still live, so you can check it out in its dedicated article here if you do not want to miss out. Meanwhile, if you don't have that kind of budget but still wish to buy an SSD for a good price, the 2TB variant of the TeamGroup SSD at $280 its lowest price in over three months. Meanwhile, those seeking 2TB but faster performance can check out Samsung's 990 PRO, which has hit the lowest price also in the last quarter or so, as it's on sale for $370 (purchase links under the specs table down below). Thus, you want a faster drive, get the 990 Pro, or you want more capacity, grab the TeamGroup 4TB linked in the first para. The 990 PRO is a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD and still one of the fastest drives available today for under $500. Speaking of fast, sequential reads and writes are rated at 7450 MB/s and 6900 MB/s, respectively. The random throughputs for reads and writes are 1400K IOPS and 1550K IOPS, respectively. The 990 PRO is based on Samsung's 7th Gen V-NAND flash, and it too is TLC. It packs 2 gigs of LPDDR4 DRAM cache, which helps the random performance. The endurance rating for this is 1200 TBW (terabytes written), which should be sufficient for most users. The Samsung 990 PRO is compatible with the PlayStation 5, but if you are going to use the 990 PRO on a PC, check out the Samsung Magician app that lets you track your drive's health, update its firmware, customize various settings, and more. The tech specs are given below: Specification TeamGroup T-FORCE G50 2TB Samsung 990 PRO 2TB Interface PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4 PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0 Form Factor M.2 2280 M.2 2280 Controller InnoGrit Controller Samsung In-house Controller NAND Flash 3D TLC 3D TLC DRAM Cache None (HMB supported) 2GB LPDDR4 Sequential Read (Max) 5,000 MB/s 7,450 MB/s Sequential Write (Max) 4,500 MB/s 6,900 MB/s Random Read (4K) Up to 600,000 IOPS Up to 1,400,000 IOPS Random Write (4K) Up to 700,000 IOPS Up to 1,550,000 IOPS TBW (Endurance) 1,300 TBW 1,200 TBW MTBF 3,000,000 hours 1,500,000 hours Operating Temperature 0°C to 70°C 0°C to 70°C Storage Temperature -40°C to 85°C -40°C to 85°C Shock Resistance 1,500G / 0.5ms 1,500G / 0.5ms Heatsink Patented Graphene Heat Spreader No Get them at the links below: Samsung 990 PRO SSD 2TB (MZ-V9P2T0B/AM): $369.99 (Sold and Shipped by Amazon US) TEAMGROUP T-Force G50 2TB SSD (TM8FFE002T0C129): $279.99 (Sold by TeamGroup, Shipped by Amazon US) Good to know This Amazon deal is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. Become a Prime member (for Students or SNAP) via Neowin Get Prime Access - Prime for half price (for qualifying Medicaid, EBT, SNAP) Subscribe to Prime Video, Audible Plus, Music Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited via Neowin As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
    • Major Xbox layoffs may claim South of Midnight developer Compulsion entirely

      By PeterTHX · Posted

      If you can't spell a simple word that 2nd graders learn, your entire argument is suspect.
    • UK to ban under-16s from social media following a six-week trial with teenagers

      By FloatingFatMan · Posted

      And here goes the "Won't someone think of the children" brigade. Get stuffed mate. This has NOTHING to do with making the internet safe. It's about tracking adults, spying on your online activity, and sending the boys around when they don't like something you post. Also, again, parliament have voted TWICE against this, and Starmer is going ahead anyway. THAT is anti-democratic bullsh**. They will use this law to track you, they will use this law to control you, and they will use this law to punish you if they don't like what you do, even if it's legal. And your data? Say bye bye to that. It'll be on the darkweb in weeks. I'm not some rando online. I've been an IT professional for 40 years, many of it in security. I know exactly what this means and what will happen to your data. I do not consent and I will not comply.
    • Windows 11 KB5094126, KB5093998 bugging out Office apps but it may not be Microsoft's fault

      By sphbecker · Posted

      "...but it may not be Microsoft's fault" seems like a reasonable way to tease what is going on without leaving the user with a false impression that an update is the problem. A title isn't a summery, it is meant to entice the user to read the article. It should not contain a misleading premise; which this title does not. You could maybe complain that the first paragraph should have included that detail. The writing style popularized over 100 years ago in newspapers will cover the most important information as soon as possible with details and nuance added later; the idea being that with each new paragraph you have less of the reader's focus.
    • Samsung Galaxy XR arrives in the UK with new AI and enterprise features

      By Fiza Ali · Posted

      Samsung Galaxy XR arrives in the UK with new AI and enterprise features by Fiza Ali Samsung is bringing its Galaxy XR headset to the UK several months after the device made its debut as the first headset built on Google's Android XR platform. The headset was first teased in late 2024 alongside Google's introduction of Android XR before making its commercial debut in 2025. Developed in collaboration with Google and Qualcomm, Galaxy XR combines mixed reality experiences with Gemini-powered AI features, allowing users to interact with digital content using voice, gestures, and visual inputs. While the hardware itself remains largely unchanged from the version Samsung unveiled last year, the company is using the UK launch to spotlight several software enhancements that have arrived through recent updates. Among the most notable additions is deeper integration with Google's ecosystem. Galaxy XR users can explore destinations through Google Maps' Immersive View, receiving AI-powered recommendations and contextual information from Gemini while navigating virtual environments. Furthermore, entertainment experiences have also expanded; users can watch 180-degree and 360-degree videos on YouTube, browse spatial content converted into 3D, and ask Gemini questions about on-screen content without interrupting playback. Samsung is also highlighting mixed-reality features such as Circle to Search, which allows users to identify real-world objects through hand gestures while using the headset's video pass-through mode. Another feature automatically converts photos and videos into spatial 3D experiences. Moreover, the headset now also supports Android Enterprise, allowing organisations to manage deployments using existing Android management tools. Annika Bizon, Vice President, Product and Marketing, Mobile Experience, Samsung UK & Ireland, talked about the device, stating: The headset is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 platform and features dual 4K Micro-OLED displays. The tech giant says that users can expect up to 2.5 hours of battery life. Samsung also confirmed that Galaxy XR will continue receiving software and security updates as the company works alongside Google and Qualcomm to expand the Android XR ecosystem. Galaxy XR is now available for pre-order and will go on sale on 8 July. Customers interested in trying the headset before launch can visit Samsung KX in London and selected Samsung Experience Stores from 17 June. Finally, the company will also host a livestream on 19 June showcasing the headset's capabilities and answering questions from prospective customers.

  • Recent Achievements

    • First Post
      Jocimo earned a badge
      First Post
    • Week One Done
      suprememobiles48 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Windows Guy earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      Prasann earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Prasann earned a badge
      Week One Done

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      519
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      174
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      92
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      82
    5. 5
      ATLien_0
      70
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!